Against the Wind
by Aurincha
Summary: Bebe takes a vacation - though not willingly - from hosting the Sinnoh Pokemon Storage System and takes some time to visit her friend, Bill. Just that he's not around. Oh, and then a storm strikes while Bebe is all alone at the Cerulean Cape...


Notes: This is actually my first attempt at writing with canon characters and settings, so please be as harsh as you ever can when reviewing. I know they aren't the most established characters in the canon, but I like nerds, so, yeah. The characters used here are Bebe (from Pokémon D/P/Pt) and Bill (you know him), but only knowledge of Bill is required to understand what's going on.

This is a completely family-friendly short story. No profanity or anything. Also, this is not a shipping fic.

**Against the Wind**

Big waves were hitting the rocky shores of Kanto, pushing their way towards the lonely cottage at the Cerulean Cape. The strong wing ripped leaves of trees and shrubbery surrounding the tiny house. The few pokémon that hadn't been cautious enough to take shelter where struggling to find one now, as the wind kept pushing their bodies in the wrong directions. The waves broke on the rocks of the shore, shattering into thousands of tiny drops of seawater that made the air moist and salty. White foam decorated the dark blue, raging sea, and the sky was completely covered in nearly black clouds. This storm was one of the biggest Kanto had seen in ages.

The lonely cottage, Sea Cottage by name, was bravely trying to withstand the rage of the sea. Its windows were rattling under the pressure of the wind, and the roof tiles were clattering in a way that suggested they were going to come off any minute. Still, none of them did come off. The cottage stood proudly in the storm, defying the wind that tried to take it apart.

Inside the cottage, a young, blond woman sat in a chair with her feet up on its edge. She was shivering, partially from being scared, partially from the room being so cold. The cottage was well-built, but the wind still seemed to find little openings from which to come in. The computer on the table in front of the woman was currently the only source of light in the room. It was humming gently, which was something the woman found very soothing. She didn't want to actually use the computer, though. She didn't like using other people's computers, and this one wasn't hers. She hadn't even logged in, although she knew the password; the computer was on solely for the calming hum.

The woman was called Bebe, and she was the host and developer of Sinnoh Pokémon Storage System. Right now, she was on a vacation for the first time after taking the job as the storage system host nearly four years ago. She had resisted the idea of going on a vacation until she had been forced to do it by her friends. She had still been sulky about it until one of her best friends, Bill, the original creator of the storage system and its host in Kanto and Johto, had presented his idea to her. He had told Bebe that she could come and visit him in his Sea Cottage, and they could do research together. This had suited Bebe perfectly, especially since she hadn't really spent any time with her childhood friend after he had left Johto a few years before she had. After she had made this deal with Bill, she was actually looking forward to her forced vacation.

When they first day of her vacation had finally come, she soon find out that Bill wouldn't be spending it with her. His presence was urgently needed in Hoenn for reasons she wasn't really aware of. Of course, it wasn't Bill's fault, so Bebe didn't really have a reason to be mad at him. Still, she felt like she had to be mad at someone, so she had decided to be mad at him anyway. After all, she was now far from other people for the first time in her life. She had been born in Goldenrod, from where she had moved straight to Hearthome, both of which were big cities filled with people, pokémon and street lights. Now, she was all alone in a cape that the sea was trying to rip apart while it was pitch-black outside. She hugged her knees and sighed. Some vacation this was.

For a while, she sat there, completely silent, listening to sounds coming from outside. The gentle humming of the computer could hardly cover the sounds of the raging waves, howling wind and the rattling and clattering of the windows. She began to shiver again as anxiousness crept into her chest.

"All right," she mumbled to herself. "This house was built here, so it can stand a storm or two. There's no reason to get all scared about it!" She stretched her legs and put them cautiously on the cold floor, as if she expected it to fall off. It didn't, so she stood up. She had to think of something to do to forget the storm altogether. Bebe was good at concentrating: when she really put her mind on something, the rest of the world could have exploded for all she cared. She could really shut the storm out of her mind if she could come up with something to do. With this objective, she started to circle around Bill's house.

Bill, being the kind albeit a bit weird person he was, had left a ton of little notes for her. Most of them, like the one laying on his keyboard, said "Feel free to use this". Some of them were more elaborate: the one taped to the door of his fridge specified that Bebe could eat anything she could find, but that Bill wouldn't take the responsibility if she ate something spoiled. As a result, Bebe had mostly eaten food that doesn't spoil: canned tuna, instant noodles, and canned peaches. The note on the bookshelf listed all the books that might have been of interest to Bebe and ones that she could borrow when she left. Bebe hadn't taken too much notice of this so far, since she'd been busy getting to know the places after her arrival yesterday morning. Nearly all of the notes were helpful, friendly little notes written on pieces of light blue paper - except one, that is. On one of Bill's closets, there was a note that said, "Please don't open". Bebe had noticed this before, but right now she was on a bad enough mood to ignore the consequences.

"Do you have some skeletons in there or what, Bill, my good mate?" she muttered while approaching the closet.

Carefully, she took off the taped note without leaving any marks on the door of the closet. This way, she could claim that there had been no note to begin with if Bill would be angry at her. Not that she could imagine him angry over something like that. Back in Goldenrod, she had pulled many pranks on him, none of which had really made him angry. Thus, she wasn't too worried about opening the closet. Sure, she felt guilty about it, but she was too stubborn to stop anymore. She held her breath and yanked the door open.

Inside, there were considerable amounts of warm and fluffy. It didn't take Bebe more than a few seconds to realize what she had found.

These were Bill's infamous costumes.

Bebe couldn't help but to break into a hearty laugh. "Oh, Bill," she sighed. She had heard about the costumes, all right, but she had never actually seen him wearing or making one. She had always shrugged the stories off as some kind of rumours or jokes, since she found it very hard to imagine the serious, enthusiastic genius in a pokémon costume. Then again, in a way, it was exactly something Bill would do. A warm feeling filled Bebe's heart and she was no longer angry at Bill. How could she be?

Right about then she nearly had a heart attack when a lighting stroke outside. The noise was unbelievably loud, making the whole cottage shake. This led Bebe to believe the lightning had actually struck something, and she was suddenly extremely scared again. She tiptoed to the window to see if something outside was burning, but she could only see darkness and the occasional white foam of the waves coming on land. The window emanated with cold air, and when she pressed her hand against it, it felt like ice to her. Suddenly, another lighting struck, showing her the scene outside in a cold, white light for a fleeting second. The sea was rising to an alarming level, and the waves actually seemed like they wanted to eat the land and leave nothing behind. A split second later, the huge noise from the lightning made the window clatter. Gasping, Bebe backed away from the window and stumbled on her own feet.

"Who in their right mind wants to live in a place like this?" she whispered while she escaped back to the computer. She then found out that the electricity had gone out, and the computer had shut off. She was left alone in a dark, cold cottage that the sea was clearly trying to destroy. She was, quite frankly, scared stiff. She had no computer, no light for reading, no heat for cooking, and no idea when the electricity would come back. She could definitely not leave the cottage now, either. She closed her eyes for a while, and tried to think of something to make her feel better.

The only solutions she could think of were in the closet. She slowly walked to its opened doors and looked at the costumes doubtingly. There were at least seven of them, and each one would be too big for her. Bill wasn't very tall, but then again, so wasn't Bebe. She reached to one of them with her hand and touched the surface. It was surprisingly hard, so it was clearly representing some armoured pokémon. Bebe pulled the costume towards herself to see what it was. It proved to be an armaldo costume: it was mostly blue with black claws as front paws and with a long blue tail. Its head, however, seemed to be missing. Bebe concluded that the suit wasn't quite finished yet and pushed it back. The next costume she could recognize without even pulling it out: with the large brown shell and yellow insect feet, it had to be kabuto.

"You have a cnack for fossil pokémon, huh?", she muttered as she pulled the costume out of the closet and spread the parts on the floor. This costume was finished, and she could wear it rather comfortably, judging by the size of it. She couldn't see how Bill could have fit in it without having to be in awkward positions, but then again, she might have been missing something. She touched the soft, warm lining of the costume and noticed it to be very carefully done. "All right, then," she said, unnecessarily loud, and started putting on the costume. There seemed to be a clever mechanism in it: when she put on the back shell and held the black front plate close enough, it locked softly in its place. The eye holes were a bit too high for her, but she could still see through them. The feet snapped into place similarly to the front plate. She was now inside the costume, and she found the interior of it very warm and cozy.

Moving around in the suit was harder than she had thought, since she had to tiptoe with the pointy insect feet. The suit had holes for sound to come through, but the noises of the storm were considerably less audible and scary now. She moved slowly to the window and looked out. The little lights in the eye holes of the costume made it easier to see what was going on outside, but not much had changed since the lightning had showed her the scene. Yet, somew how, the waves and the strong wind felt a lot less intimidating now. She touched the window with her insect-glove-covered hand - it let out a little clicking sound when it hit the window - but couldn't feel the coldness through the costume.

Suddenly she felt like going outside. She wanted to feel the storm, and the costume made her feel safe about it. She slowly moved to the door and opened it, feeling very lucky that it wasn't locked, since there was no way she could've opened it with the costume on. The wind was pushing against the door, trying to keep it shut. It was roughly as strong as Bebe was, but since she was more determined about her task, the wind ultimately lost. Bebe sneaked outside and heard the muffled slam of the door behind her when the wind finally had its way. She was now standing on the cape with nothing between her and the raging sea.

The wind tried to hammer her back and make her retreat back to the cottage, but she refused to obey. The hungry waves tried to jump on her and take her with them, but she wasn't afraid of them. The mass of dark clouds above her hanged so low it almost seemed like the sky was falling down, but she took no notice of this. She stared at the endless, deep blue ocean that opened before her eyes, and felt a strange connection to it. She felt like this was the only place on earth one could live in and that the ocean was her friend. She took a step forward - it was hard, because the wind was still very adamant on making her go back inside, through the wall if not otherwise - and a strong urge to jump to the waves swept over her. Yet she had the feeling that the ground she stood on was equally good, like an inseparable part of what she was.

"I'm a kabuto," she realized.

Suddenly, while she was watching the sea, the clouded sky ripped open and a ray of light fell down on the sea. Bebe could see the waves rising high under the ray of light, looking not much lighter in colour than the waves that tried to catch her on the shore. The ocean is deep, she thought. The hole in the clouds slowly closed and the light disappeared. A strong gust of wind hit Bebe and threw her at the wall of the cottage. She fought to keep her balance in the howling, raging gusts that tried to swipe her off her feet and throw her over the house or into the sea. She tried to open the door, but the current wind was too strong. She yanked the doorknob with all her her might, but to avail. Suddenly the wind let her go from its grip for a fleeting moment, during which she managed to get the door open. The moment was soon gone, however, and a new gust of wind threw her into the house and slammed the door shut behind her.

Bebe laid on the floor, feeling confused but strangely tranquil.

***

Bill McKenzie was in a hurry. As soon as he had heard of the great storm that had raged in Kanto last night, he had been trying to get home. It had been a long way from Hoenn, so it was almost evening already. His travelling had included a lot of hitching rides from people whose pokémon knew Surf, Fly, or Teleport, since he didn't have a single one with him. He had to make haste for his own peace of mind: he was worried of Bebe, who had lived in big cities her whole life. As Bill turned to the familiar road that led to his cottage, he shook his head. What were the odds of a storm hitting Kanto just when Bebe was alone in the worst possible place?

Walking towards the tip of the Cerulean Cape, Bill could tell that it really had been a big storm. The trees and the shrubbery had lost a lot of leaves and branches that were scattered on the route, and the end of the cape was covered with seaweed and all kinds of rotten pieces of wood the waves had thrown on the ground. It would take a while to clean it all, he noticed, much to his dismay. The sky was still grey and the wind hadn't fully settled down yet, so it wouldn't make sense to clean it all away yet, though. The Sea Cottage seemed to be perfectly fine. However, as he approached it, he saw a strange dent in the wall next to the door. Gasping, he ran the few remaining metres to his door and tore it open.

"Bebe? Are you in here?" he yelled to the darkness that greeted him from the door. When no-one answered him, he let out a relieved sigh. Bebe had probably been evacuated or she had left to a safer place on her own. He took a step forward and was about to turn the lights on, when a strange noise caught his attention. It sounded like something relatively sharp was hitting the floor repeatedly. Then, he saw a dark shape approaching him.

Gasping, Bill stumbled backwards and reached his hand to turn the lights on. With a faint click, the lights went on and Bill could see the creature after him.

It was a large kabuto.

Actually, it was someone dressed as a large kabuto.

"B-Bebe?" He stuttered.

"It's me all right," the muffled sound of his friend told him from inside the costume.

"I thought I left a not on the closet!" Bill exclaimed, blushing at the same time.

Bebe couldn't tell if he was embarrassed or angry at her, but she concluded it wasn't relevant for the current situation anyway. Instead, she told Bill what was on her mind. "What kind of an idiot makes a costume that you can't get out of?!" she roared at him. "I found the release mechanism, all right, but _I can't reach it_! Honestly, Bill!"

"It's a known problem, actually," Bill defended himself, now clearly embarrased rather than angry, "I just haven't gotten around to fixing it." He pushed the button on the front panel of the costume. "You know, I really thought I could reach the button if it was there, but apparently, the glove isn't flexible enough after all."

The costume opened, revealing a very irritated Bebe. "I was stuck in there for almost a day, you know. You can't leave dangerous stuff like that laying around."

"Technically, it wasn't laying around. It was in a closed closet with a 'do-not-open'-note taped to it." Bill crossed his hands. "What were you doing inside it, anyway, Bebe?"

This time, it was Bebe who blushed. "I was scared by the storm, so I wanted to wear it. I thought it'd be warm and safe in there... Which it was, actually." She was quiet for a while and looked out of the open door and at the windy sea. "It was strange... I almost felt like a real pokémon. I had a strange feeling of unity with the storm, and..."

She turned to look at Bill. He was looking at the sea and smiling from ear to ear, but it wasn't a scornful smile, nor was it an amused smile. He was genuinely happy about something.

"What?" Bebe asked, rather confused.

"You, my friend," Bill said, hardly containing himself, "have just proved that I am neither insane nor stupid. You have proved that my costumes actually work, even when you don't believe in it." He turned to Bebe and let out a delighted laugh. "It might be eccentric, but aren't all new ideas?"

Bebe pondered his words for a while and then stepped away from the costume laying in her feet. "Bill," she said. "I'm really hungry."

"Oh, of course," Bill said and hurried to his kitchenette. "I know just the thing to eat when you've been stuck in a costume for a day. Wait a minute while I prepare it for us, okay?"

Bebe didn't answer. She walked to the door and looked at the ocean. The wind was different from the one that had blown last night: this one caressed her gently instead of hammering her body with its force. She closed her eyes and smelled the sea-scented air.

"Bebe?" Bill called her from inside.

"I'm coming," Bebe shouted back.

She smiled at the sea, stepped inside and closed the door behind her.


End file.
